JP Schriefer's BATs

[Parisian 556]

Awsome building. 

[Tyberius06 12,209]

Really nice building! Thank you for the previously released buildings as well.

- Tyberius

[TakemeThere 5,834]

Wow, just beautiful work. I always liked the choice of buildings you chose to render, buildings with setbacks and intricate details incorporated into their facades and your recreations definitely more than do them justice.

I'm really looking forward to using these in my downtown areas, they'll go a long way to adding some heft and character to the skyline. 

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

@Bastet69008 they definitely did! Thank you

@matias93 nah but all of them are too clean and they look alike, in fact there are only 15 textures there, but I'm happy you like them

@korver thank you!

@Parisian thank you!

@Tyberius06 thank you and no problem

@Takingyouthere thank you, it's great you like them. The problem with these old ones I'm doing is that their lots are very irregular and their dimensions are really bad to SC4. Actually I don't even know how I'm going to upload them, maybe the whole block, maybe separated buildings..I'll analyse the options after finish them.

 

I'm travelling for almost a month now. I was in the countryside and now I'm on the coast until next week when I'll be back home. But I couldn't be on vacation and do nothing related to BATs, so I have a notebook with me. My initial plans were to work on the Singer, 275 Madison Avenue and try to finish the Washington Life Bldg block. Although I was able to fix some wrong dimensions on 275 Madison Ave, this notebook just can't deal with them because 3ds Max is sooooo slow it's just impossible. I had to work with simple buildings then.

The little monster below is a governmental building in my city´and it's the local HQ for something like the IRS in the United States - you know... that thing that steals your money.

 

Also I was able to continue the other block from the old New York where today it's Zuccotti Park. It's where Fidelity & Casualty Building used to be and it's in a very advanced stage, but I can't continue it now because it also became too slow to deal with after adding details.
I'll at least try to do some previews, but it will probably be posted in a new thread, because I'm happy to say I'm now part of NYBT team after an @Aaron Graham invite

 

[matias93 7,535]

I love every single Brazilian gobernmental building, but this one is perfect for what I'm trying to do with the civic neighbourhood on my city.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

IMO this one would also be suitable as a generic stage 7 CO$$ mid-rise. It does have a certain "administrative" vibe to it, though. I wouldn't expect anything too exciting going on in there, just your average paper-pushing office stuff.

Congrats on your invite to become a member of the NYBT! This could only be topped by Mr. Awesome Graham picking up the BAT again.

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

Thank you, guys! It's now on STEX.
BTW is the LEX having problems again? I'm trying to see the lots list there and they ask me use at least one filter, when I do it I just receive the same message again.

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

I'm modeling several buildings from New York City but I'll show the ones I didn't in my other thread. I know I have some old projects like the Hearst Tower and although a good part of it is done, it has too much glass and I'm not really satisfied with the results because I'm definitely awful when it regards to glasses.

The Bryant and 24 West 40th Street
Since The Bryant is a very recent building I'm still figuring out how exactly the last floor and the terrace turned out to be and also its back on the base. 24 W 40th St needs work on the roof and one of its sides.

 

The Commerce Building is almost 100% modeled, I just need to do the layout of the windows in one of the sides.

 

The Fidelity and Casualty buildings are the ones I mentioned in the beginning of the year. Since they were demolished long ago some things need good research to be done. The main problem there at the moment is the roof. No idea how it use to be, but in case I don't find good references I'll just do a generic one.

[Jasoncw 11,933]

Remember to turn ambient occlusion on on all your materials!

[Jasoncw 11,933]

Looking great as always!

[PaPa-J 778]

Simply outstanding!

[Barroco Hispano 26,785]

@ESP15 

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

On 15/07/2019 at 8:48 PM, Jasoncw said:

Remember to turn ambient occlusion on on all your materials!

All of them are turned on

 

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Wonderful work, this means your part of nybt?

Oh. Is that 500 5th Avenue?

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

Thank you very much, guys.

Now I have a BATter Hamlet dilemma: to resize, or not to resize?
The Commerce Building - that I realized that recently has been renovated and changed it's name to '10 Grand Central' - has 51,816m in length making it 3,4 tiles and not a W2W building in game although it is in RL. If I make it 46,4m it would be a perfect W2W bldg in game, but it would also be a bit distorted because I'm talking about decrease it's length in almost 12%. I really couldn't make a decision about that. So here you have both images to show how they look in each option to see which one you think is better.

[mattb325 28,880]

It looks beautiful, down to every last detail.

I prefer the slim version that will fit neatly as a W2W, but, even if you end up going with the larger version, it could still be pushed to the corner of the lot to ensure some W2W compatibility.

[Francis90b 748]

Wow, this update has been a wonderful surprise !

The model is impeccable, everything looks spot on.

 

As far as your dilemma goes, i'd voice my support for the 46.4 mtrs option.

In any case, a 51.8 mtrs width is just enough to go above 3 tiles in width (48 mtrs maximum), but not nearly enough to fill a four tile width in any satisfactory way unless you incorporate some filler model, either by looking at the would-be adjacent buildings in reality or devising some of your own.

 

As to how to apply the shrinkage, you might either just rescale everything down to a certain percentage, or consider every element of the building insisting on the excessively broad side and reduce it by a given amount until you reach the desired result.

The latter approach may be more time-consuming, but might allow you to play with facade elements (i.e. windows and piers within the tower) until you can find a balance that is perfectly satisfactory to you - you might even, for that purpose, reduce different elements by a different amount (e.g. "i'd reduce all piers  on that side by 0.1 and all windows by 0.2").

There isn't much difference between the two approaches in the end - if you believe that the first one is too "crude" or doesn't satisfy you in the overall "feel" it delivers, you can experiment with the latter, "localized" approach.

 

Architects actually resorted to these strategies when confronted with the issue of fitting an elevation they devised into a street frontage that was slightly too wide or too narrow.They even implemented that deliberately, for example to help adressing the issue of corner plots having a significant difference between the two street frontages.

A good example might be found in Liverpool's Oriel Chambers:

https://external-preview.redd.it/TyJSGz2ks6Qy1484SyRwsPUeH_ReG9Pdywk-vstnW6g.jpg?auto=webp&s=41a68f2233fd8e8412faaa3973f979ff368d7fb0

The stunning oriels defining it are in relation with the width of the building's facade at each side, and in this way they make the context work with, and not against, the architect's idea.

And a Manhattan-specific one might be Warren & Wetmore's 366 Madison avenue:

https://42floors.com/images/H1de5fd2e6c5d47039eeea379b510fd27b3b75808S780x520W0seB505153O/36f89df9aaebf177d7977d8004219bfea34d17ed

I believe that, if implementing them might represent a slight deviation from the letter of the building you're trying to represent, they would not, in and by themselves, undermine the connection between your model and the essence of tha building, or any building in general, which is the result of an idea and the circumstances in which such idea found its implementation.

 

Whatever your decision might be, i hope to see more .

[Francis90b 748]

I'd offer a further alternative.

The 1916 zoning resolution stated that when a building was built on a corner plot, and when the two sides were subject to different height limits, the designer could adopt the more generous of the two height limits to the side that would otherwise have been subjected to the more restrictive one, and that within a maximum distance of 150 ft (45.7 mtrs) from the corner point.

Looking at your model, I would wager that the real building was built following such rule, and the recessed area (on your model's left) marks the beginning of the zone where the regulation loophole i mentioned wouldn't have been appliable anymore.

Then, the architects added a specific twist - a recession as deep as the one present on that building wasn't really necessary (it could have been a standard wedding cake facade as in  the rest of the building, the setbacks just needed to start slightly lower than they do on the rest of the building), but by creating it the architect improved the access to light in that area of the building.

Being that 46.4 mtrs (the frontage on the 3 tile front) isn't much more than 45.7 (the 150' allowance), i'd say that, for SimCity's sake, these two might be considered as equivalent.

In your case, that would mean to chop off the leftmost area.

The advantages would be that it might be an easier approach to follow, and would result in much less (and hopefully no) shrinkage to be applied anywhere, the disadvantage is that it would deprive the building from a rather interesting facet, especially in SimCity's perspective.

I already intended to mention it, but i believed that it wasn't really an option...but, for the sake of completeness, i reconsidered.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Wonderful work man!!!!!!

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

@mattb325 thank you! It turned out I decided to release the slim version indeed.

@Francis90b thank you! When I released it I considered what you and Matt said and decided to go ahead with the slim version as you like. Your suggestion of reducing elements of the facade in different values was probably the best option to make it look better, but I just don't have so much time to 'fix' buildings this way. Cutting part of it was not an option just because I like to keep all their shape - but I must say when I decided to model this building I just took some measures of it with Google Earth and it was almost perfect, I only realized that 'hidden' part later
It's great to see you around, always with very useful tips and knowledge!

@Aaron Graham thank you!

So I didn't though it was going to happen here, but things are also getting closed and suspended all across the country due to COVID-19 even with just a few cases (a good prevention... I guess?). That means no classes or work, but time to BAT.

 

This is 1 George Quay's Plaza in Dublin. Since I think it's a quite interesting building I decided to release it as a diag version as well.

Normal view:

 

Diagonal view:

 

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

A lonnnnnnnnnnng time ago I was modeling the school I attended, but I got demotivated because the lot where it's located is just too bumpy and I'd have to modify the original buildings entrances too much. But some days ago I had an idea, why not make the sports field, it would be something different for me, so here we go:

 

The lot sizes are just the minimum so they can entirely fit there. They are all like they used to look back in 2011, but the 1x2 volleyball court and the 2x2 sports court will have two other versions with color variations that were made during the years. The uncovered 3x2 court will have one more version, changing it's colors and also adding a cover.
That suspended court still need some adaptations, which is why there are some floating steps there.

And thank you again, @Jasoncw. Fences and nets are everywhere here

 

[gutterclub 2,729]

These a great, I had been thinking of doing a Football (Soccer) centre for a while but I don't have to BAT the pitches now! Thank you so much.

[art128 4,618]

Those will be some very welcomed additions to the existing sports pieces. 

 

[Bastet69008 1,102]

Glad to see you back buddy! Some great work here! Any plans to go back to some of your BH creations?

[elavery 1,013]

These may be fairly simple BATs but they are sorely needed in SC4. Could I also suggest a large swimming pool or two? Maybe 4x3? Most of the swimming pools in-game are tiny 1x1 affairs. Great to see you back modeling!

[Jasoncw 11,933]

The materials for this will be difficult to do right because in real life they are shiny (I found photos ) but when things are shiny and face the sky, they reflect the sky too much, and get this washed out cyan haze look to them. This is the one thing that SimFox didn't get right with BAT4Max.

Normally what I do is just check the "Highlights + FG Only" option, which turns off actual reflections (so the blue sky color is no longer being reflected). I do this a lot with roofs.

Something else you can try is to go to the Advanced Rendering Options rollout in the material, and for reflections, checking "max distance" (and putting the maximum distance anything would have to reflect in your scene, or maybe just a big number like 100 meters), and then checking "fade to end color" and picking a color for it to reflect if it goes beyond the other distance. So in other words, for objects near the material, it will reflect them like normal, but after that distance instead of reflecting things (or in this case, the sky), it will reflect back the color that you entered. I've never tried this before but I think it should work and it's probably the best option available.

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

@gutterclub Well, the more the better, IMO you should still do it

@art128 I hope so. Nice to see you around again!

@Bastet69008 Thank you! Well I was checking the list of my first post and I must say that the ones with better probability from BH to be released are the old train station - which doesn't even exist anymore and it's probably kinda useless to your Brazilian re-creations and Park Avignon (one of the first models I started to do and is still not finished, what a shame). A long time ago I mentioned somewhere in the forums that I was modeling the downtown, but it was just for fun because most buildings there wouldn't fit the game so well. Some of them are on my plans though. What I have from there right now is the BEMGE building, a Niemeyer creation which was recently restored. BEMGE and the other diagonal glass buildings from there have a chance to be in-game, I just need to learn how to do diag. buildings (I realized the method I was thinking didn't really work when I tried it with the Dublin building). Those small 'twin towers' - Sulacap/Sulamerica Bldgs. at the right are also on my plans, I can bring some renders soon if you'd like. The BEMGE:

@elavery I agree. There are not so many sport courts available. There's a swimming pool from the school that I will test if it looks good in game after I finish the sport courts, but it's not the size you want as well. When I do this test I'll try to make a bigger pool and show you here.

@Jasoncw Yeah, believe me, in summer days that orange painting will make you almost close your eyes, maybe that's why they painted it with dark colors later Knowing these materials were shiny and would look weird, what I did was use the sky reflection as a 'desaturator' - not the best option to use blue to desaturate things, but anyways.. - I tried the options you suggested and what I see is that in each one the colors end up more saturated. So when I desaturate the colors again they end up looking like the first version of it, so I'm a bit confused right now

*I'll try other colors than grey as end color as well, I forgot to do that.

 

So guys the other versions are almost done as well, I'll bring some renders later with them.

[art128 4,618]

I like the colors from the bottom one.

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

@art128 Yeah I'll keep them that way.

Thank you Jason (again). Maybe I should add that to my signature to avoid so many repetitions

Ok now I have all of the variations to show. There are just small details to add (some small basketball lines, benches and plates in some courts). One more thing when I was adding poles next to the goals of the soccer field, I noticed it was just too wide. Checking it's real dimension it was 7 meters wider than it should! So now it's lot is not that big anymore.

The covered court with parking: the 3x3 version is the one based on the real thing, the 3x2 is because I think it looks less weird. I'll add some better painting on those ugly walls.

 

[elavery 1,013]

The BEMGE building looks interesting. Great to see people such as yourself keeping the game alive!